Discrimination of 2D wall textures by passive echolocation for different reflected-to-direct level difference configurations

Abstract

In this work, we study people’s ability to discriminate between different 2D textures of walls by passive listening to a pre-recorded tongue click in an auralized echolocation scenario. In addition, the impact of artificially enhancing the early reflection magnitude by 6dB and of removing the direct component while equalizing the loudness was investigated. Listening test results for different textures, ranging from a flat wall to a staircase, were assessed using a 2 Alternative-Forced-Choice (2AFC) method, in which 14 sighted, untrained participants were indicating 2 equally perceived stimuli out of 3 presented stimuli. The average performance of the listening subjects to discriminate between different textures was found to be significantly higher for walls at 5m distance, without overlap between the reflected and direct sound, compared to the same walls at 0.8m distance. Enhancing the reflections as well as removing the direct sound were found to be beneficial to differentiate textures. This finding highlights the importance of forward masking in the discrimination process. The overall texture discriminability was found to be larger for the walls reflecting with a higher spectral coloration.

Tom Pouce III, an Electronic White Cane for Blind People: Ability to Detect Obstacles and Mobility Performances

“…One limitation of our tests may reside in the fact that our long-term electronic cane users may have lost part of their ability to use a simple white cane. For this kind of test, passive or active echolocation [ 22 , 23 ] may be the only possibility for avoiding obstacles (excluding chance). Indeed, the obstacles we used were made of clothes, were less than 1.2 m high and difficult to detect with “echolocation” at a normal walking speed.…”

Developmental psychologists should adopt citizen science to improve generalization and reproducibility

“…Even where precision is available, it is not always attained. A major area of current research and development is improving instrument calibration and ensuring proper use by subjects (Kritly et al, 2021;Li et al, 2020;Woods et al, 2017). In the meantime, there is an increasingly large tool bag of tricks for designing around instrument limitations (Hartshorne, de Leeuw, et al, 2019;Krantz, 2001;Passell et al, 2021).…”

History and activities of KU Leuven Laboratory of Acoustics

“…In collaboration with BP -KU Leuven and the KU Leuven laboratory for Experimental Oto-, Rhino-, Laryngology (expORL), the laboratory has put its first steps into the field of psychoacoustics and research on perception of sound in the framework of an FWO-V project ("VIRTAK") on sound source localization, the use of virtual acoustics for testing of speech intelligibility of hearing impaired people [30,31] and echolocation [32,33], by combining binaural impulse response simulations with listening tests with auralized sound. This research was further extended to auralized sound-based recognition of textures of walls.…”